How to create a blog dashboard in Notion

Welcome to the latest installment of the Notion for Blogging series! Today, I’ll walk you through how to create a blog dashboard in Notion.

Ever felt overwhelmed by the sheer number of tools needed to manage your blog and brand? Wish you could plan and create all your content in one place? I wrote this post with you in mind! (Because we’re kindred spirits, my friend. I’ve been there, done that, got the t-shirt and the colorful pen.)

What is a blog dashboard? Why do you need one? How do you create your own? And why should it be in Notion? Let’s dive in!

What is a Notion blog dashboard?

A sneak peek of the Notion for Blogging Premium Template Pack, available now!

Your blog dashboard is an all-inclusive hub for managing your blog and brand.

A dashboard is a top-level page in Notion that links to all your subpages, like your content creation hub, your social media hub, and more. Think of it like the homepage of your website.

Because your Notion blog dashboard is customizable, it acts as more than just a wiki. I prefer to embed my master content calendar in my dashboard so I can see what’s publishing at a glance. I also embed a filtered view of my task database so I can see which tasks need immediate attention.

A robust blog dashboard might include:

• A detailed content calendar where you can plan all your content, including blog, social, video, and audio
• An editorial task database for simpler task management
• An expense and sales tracker
• SEO keyword research and backlink outreach tracking
• A brand kit, vision and mission page, and reader/buyer personas

I’ll show you how to create all of these pages and many more throughout the Notion for Blogging series. Subscribe to the blog so you don’t miss a tutorial!

Why do you need a blog dashboard in Notion?

You don’t need me to tell you how much goes into running a blog. In addition to writing blog posts, you’re in charge of:

• creating graphics
• managing multiple social media accounts
• SEO keyword research
• backlink outreach
• recording videos and podcast episodes
• monetizing your content

…and that’s just the start.

You probably have a content plan scattered across several apps and tools. How helpful would it be to organize everything in one place?

And I do mean everything.

Blog post drafts. Content calendar. Guest post outreach tracker. Keyword research. Video and audio scripts. Vision and mission. Brand kit.

Notion lets you do all that and so much more.

Will you still need all those other graphic design, SEO, and social media scheduling apps? Yes. But when it comes to organizing and drafting your content, nothing compares to Notion. Trust me on this one — I’ve tried just about every productivity tool and tracker out there!

How to create a blog dashboard in Notion

Check out my video for a step-by-step walkthrough on creating your own blog dashboard in Notion. Subscribe to my YouTube channel to get instant access to all my tutorials!

Or, read on for a text walkthrough.

Step 1: Create a new top-level page

Step 2: Figure out which pages you need

I recommend making a rough list of pages you think you might need before you dive in. Just focus on creating the subpages first — formatting and making them pretty comes later!

Here are a few basic ideas to get you started:

• Content creation hub: This database is your content planner and calendar. It’s a big-picture view of all your content. Get granular here — create templates for blog posts, social media posts, videos, and podcast episodes. I recommend creating this database first, since you’ll embed it in several other pages.
• Social media hub: The social media hub houses pages for each social media account. Those subpages might include a filtered view of your content creation hub, goals for the month, and ad spend tracking.
• Vision and mission: Identify your niche; flesh out your reader/buyer personas; outline exactly what you want your blog to achieve and where you hope to be in a year or 5 years.
• An SEO tracker: Use this to track your backlink outreach efforts, organic search traffic, target keywords, and more.
• A monetization page: This makes it easy to track your expenses and income. Because you can import CSV files into a Notion database, you won’t need to spend hours manually inputting expenses.

Step 3: Start formatting your pages

Once you’ve got your pages created, start formatting. As I mentioned earlier, I recommend starting with your content creation hub. This hub will feature in most of your other pages.

Here’s a sneak peek of the Content Creation Hub from the Notion for Blogging Premium Template Pack:

A robust content creation hub will include these basic fields:

• Post title
• Category: Whichever categories you have on your blog
• Content type: Blog post, social media, video, email, podcast
• Platform: Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, etc.
• Priority
• Publish date
• Keywords
• Status: Not started, in progress, complete, awaiting

I also have a few relation fields in my content creation hub. The relation property in Notion allows you to link two databases. One of those fields links my content creation hub database with my content offers database, which is where I plan my major campaigns, products, and deliverables.

More ideas for your Notion blog dashboard

Need some more inspo for your Notion blog dashboard? I’ve got you covered!

Email newsletter hub

This use case isn’t as popular as some of the others we’ve explored. But you can use Notion to draft and format beautiful emails. This is especially helpful if you’re looking to keep everything in one place. If you create and schedule in your content creation hub, you’ll know exactly when your emails are scheduled to go out alongside all your other content.

Notion might not be the most intuitive option for tracking subscribers (especially if you have thousands of them). But it’s perfect for drafting content, managing tasks, and setting goals.

Podcast planner

Notion is the ultimate podcast planning app. Write your scripts. Manage your tasks. Track your guests and outreach. Plus, you can even embed audio files and Spotify playlists for easy access right in Notion.

Goal tracker

Here’s a sneak peek of the robust goal tracker I’ve built in Notion as part of the Notion for Blogging Premium Template Pack:

This database includes templates with analytics, tasks, and planning and review questions.

If this is a bit too involved for you, create a simpler goal tracker with space to review your goals and anticipate challenges. Whichever setup you choose, I recommend making it easy to duplicate for each month/quarter.

How to create your own blog dashboard in Notion: wrapping up

Now you have everything you need to start creating your own Notion blog dashboard.

Overwhelmed just thinking about it? As a blogger and content creator myself, I know the feeling. You’re juggling a million and one things. You don’t have time to create a Notion blog dashboard from scratch.

That’s why I did the hard work for you and created the ultimate Notion blog dashboard with everything you need to plan, organize, and create all of your content in one place.

This template pack includes 75+ pages and templates with built-in content calendars, checklists, resources, and so much more!

Want to create your own pages instead? That’s cool too! On my YouTube channel, I’m creating FREE video tutorials for all the pages you’ve seen here and so many more. Subscribe to the channel so you never miss a video!

If you do use the free tutorials to create your own Notion blog dashboard, please consider buying me a coffee to fuel future video tutorials and blog posts. I’m grateful for your support!